A Tale of Two Infinities

Book excerpt: 'An incredible tour of our universe's greatest mysteries' Professor Dan Hooper This cutting-edge book investigates the extraordinary potential of multimessenger astronomy to revolutionise our understanding of the universe The spectacular advances of modern astronomy have opened our horizon on an unexpected cosmos: a dark, mysterious universe, populated by enigmatic entities we know very little about, like black holes, or nothing at all, like dark matter and dark energy. This book discusses the extraordinary potential of a new discipline dubbed 'multimessenger astronomy', combining the traditional approach based on the observation of light from celestial objects, with a new method based on other 'messengers' - such as gravitational waves, neutrinos, and cosmic rays - that carry information from otherwise inaccessible corners of the universe. Interweaving the discussion of multimessenger astronomy with an exploration of the surprising connections between the study of the universe on the largest scales, and the physics of the infinitely small, this text provides an accessible and fascinating introduction to cutting-edge findings in recent cosmology which could soon revolutionize our understanding of the universe.